The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

[RavenDarkendale]

Well. a picture was taken, I posted it. I think it an official police photo, but could be this stupid money grubbing idiot's photo I guess...

[RivkahChaya]

Well. a picture was taken, I posted it. I think it an official police photo, but could be this stupid money grubbing idiot's photo I guess...

Oh, I agree that crashing a funeral is terrible, no matter what the reason. The Westboro Baptist Church people are disgusting, and the people who crashed Ryan White's (a teenager who died of AIDS in the 90s) funeral because Michael Jackson was attending, and they wanted to see him were disgusting. But I don't think it was ghoulish, since the motive was profit.

RD, I think that was the police photo. Police photos have been reprinted in books that were published while Anne Morrow was still alive, so I assume those were part of the public record once the trial was over, because they were admitted as evidence.

[Ginger]

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I ended up with The Case that Never Dies, which so far seems very satisfactory.

[RivkahChaya]

Here's the loon who has been stalking the Lindbergh children, trying to get them to have DNA tests.

There are a couple of other claimants who are still living, and who get some press from time to time. One of them is a woman. I am not making that up. She sounds mentally disturbed; apparently she has a book published, but I haven't tracked it down, so I suspect it may have been a vanity press-- or she just fantasizing. There's a guy who tried for a while to get Anne Morrow to meet him while she was still alive, and apparently freaked her out pretty thoroughly. I think he's the same guy who now calls himself Charles Lindbergh, jr., and has the website, but I'm not positive, as more than one person has used this name, and the guy running the site is tight about what his real name is.

This guy insists he was treated as an orphan, and "raised by strangers," but is really vague about the details, so I don't know whether he was adopted, raised by relatives of his parents because they died when he was young, or really was abandoned, or maybe orphaned by immigrants who didn't have any family, and then a foster child, which back in his day, meant he was sort of lent out by an orphanage to do farm work, or housework. I'd think if it were the last one, he'd be more candid, because that actually could mesh with the kidnapping story, if Hauptmann had somehow lost track of the child because the ransom wasn't paid as quickly as he'd thought. Don't misunderstand-- don't think for a moment that this guy is the Lindbergh child-- I'm just saying that if there really were anything at all murky about his past, he'd probably tell the story straightforward, instead of being evasive.

[Limehouse]

Hi Rivkah.

I strongly disagree with you, and I think most other seasoned Casebookers will back me up.

There is a very great difference in posting 125-year-old police crime scene photos on a History forum where members trade ideas in an effort to achieve some kind of belated justice for the victims, and being a ruthless commercial photographer who barges into the mortuary and forcibly pries the lid off the sealed casket of a recently murdered baby in order to take a photograph that he intends to sell for profit.

In my opinion, Mary Jane Kelly has received a great deal more sympathy, empathy, prayers, and RESPECT on Casebook than she ever did in her short sad life.

Best regards,
Archaic

For what it's worth, and I do not know a great deal about the case, I'm with Archaic concerning the photograph of the baby.

I must admit to always having been uncomfortable with the crime scene photos of MJK being published and displayed so often, but there is a very great deal of difference between a crime scene photo being reproduced in order to uphold a debate or illustrate the work of JtR, and a photo taken by someone who has been prepared to invade the coffin and disrupt the privacy and dignity a dead child (or anyone lese) should afford. Were these photographs published? It's unthinkable and ghoulish is the exact word I would use.

[RavenDarkendale]

RivkahChaya

This loon is almost as bad as The Tichborne Claimant. The baby died, Lindbergh was careful to visit his illegitimate kids as often as possible, so why in the name of all that is holy would he not track down his firstborn if he were alive?

Read about The Tichborne Claimant: http://www3.hants.gov.uk/community-h...e-claimant.htm

People also claimed they were Princess Anastasia, her brother Prince Michael, Amelia Erhart, Billy the Kid, and so on. People will do anything if there's money or fame involved...

Compare these pictures:


Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh


Land Morrow Lindbergh


Reeve Lindbergh


Anne Spencer Lindbergh

I couldn't find one of their brother Scott Lindbergh of which I was certain it was he, and most of Jon Morrow Lindbergh were tiny and I'm at my limit on pictures.


Lindbergh's illegitimate children With Brigitte Hesshaimer, confirmed by DNA,
Dyrk and David Hesshaimer and their sister Astrid Bouteuil, obviously Lindbergh's kids!

I also failed to turn up pictures of Vago and Christoph Hesshaimer, Lindy's kids by Brigitte's sister Marietta Hesshaimer, and we only know his kids by Valeska (surname unknown) were a boy and a girl.

[RavenDarkendale]

Like I said it's tiny, but here is Jon Marrow Lindbergh


Now we get into the realm of the claimant:


Supposed to be Charles A Lindbergh, Jr

Notice that there is some resemblance, but not really. Can't do DNA on the baby's body as he was cremated. Perhaps Lindbergh's lids should have the DNA ran either to shut him up, or discover yet another illegitimate child, for if Lindbergh is his father, he still isn't the Lindbergh baby

[Errata]

I'm actually inclined to believe that Billy the Kid lived. Everyone at his funeral said the corpse looked nothing like him.

[Mayerling]

For what it's worth, and I do not know a great deal about the case, I'm with Archaic concerning the photograph of the baby.

I must admit to always having been uncomfortable with the crime scene photos of MJK being published and displayed so often, but there is a very great deal of difference between a crime scene photo being reproduced in order to uphold a debate or illustrate the work of JtR, and a photo taken by someone who has been prepared to invade the coffin and disrupt the privacy and dignity a dead child (or anyone lese) should afford. Were these photographs published? It's unthinkable and ghoulish is the exact word I would use.

Hi Limehouse,

Actually, I have a confession - I really find the two photos of the dead Mary Kelly so appalling that I rarely look at them. In fact if I see them I try to avert my sight of them or I will skip the thread they appear on. To me all murder photos are awful (and there are many, including those of the other Ripper Victims), but the only pictures that I have seen that compare to Mary's two pictures are those of the dead "Black Dahlia", some of the Andersonville prisoners (one looking like a living skeleton) and the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Interestingly I am used to the photo of Andrew Jackson Borden's dead (hacked) body in his home in Fall River, Massachusetts.

But I do agree with your point of view. The police photos and autopsy photos served a purpose for investigating crimes. Some idiot who burst into a church to force his way to the body in the coffin for a shot to sell to a newspaper is beneath contempt. I suppose the best known example (although it was done by a New York Daily News staff photographer) was the 1928 photo (published on their front page) of the electrocution of Ruth Snyder). It was the heyday of sensational journalism, but if they got the photo again in a similar case I bet they'd put it in again!

It also does not have to be a murder case. In their book, THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE LUSITANIA, A.A.Hoehling and Mary Hoehling mentioned some newsreel photographer who was taking film of the passengers and crew of the rapidly sinking liner because, "this will be the greatest film ever!" (his words). I am glad to say that he drowned, and the film was never found.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

I'm actually inclined to believe that Billy the Kid lived. Everyone at his funeral said the corpse looked nothing like him.

Hi Errata,

Actually, there is a similar story that Jessie James was not killed on April 2, 1882 in his home by "that dirty coward who shot Mr. Howard". I saw some discussion on the history channel last year that Jessie found a substitute, and may have lived into the 1930s. But there is a similar story that Butch Cassidy was not killed in Bolivia, but lived in California when he died in the 1940s. And Jay Robert Nash wrote a book that Dillinger was not the man shot by the F.B.I. in the alley near the Biograph Movie Theater in Chicago in 1934. Somehow this is a kind of wishful thinking.

I could have mentioned the theories about John Wilkes Booth's surviving until 1903 in Oklahoma too!

Jeff

[RivkahChaya]

Now we get into the realm of the claimant:


Supposed to be Charles A Lindbergh, Jr

Notice that there is some resemblance, but not really. Can't do DNA on the baby's body as he was cremated. Perhaps Lindbergh's lids should have the DNA ran either to shut him up, or discover yet another illegitimate child, for if Lindbergh is his father, he still isn't the Lindbergh baby

He does share a lot of features with the pictures of the baby: close-set eyes, cow-lick, broad forehead, small chin, but those are all pretty common features.

The reason that the Lindbergh kids aren't having DNA tests is that people like this don't accept defeat; they do what's called "moving the goalposts." If the DNA tests didn't match, he'd claim something was wrong with then-- the samples were switched, or that Anne Morrow was unfaithful, and Lindbergh wasn't the father of her other children, or something. He'd start demanding something like the exhumation of Lindbergh's body for an attempt at tissue recovery, or a DNA test with a paternal cousin.

The fiasco would get press attention, and probably supporters for the "Lindbergh" pretender. Public recognition as the Lindbergh child is the last thing the family wants, so they don't want him getting any publicity.

Something that gets lost in the shuffle, is that the police did check around the state for another missing toddler who could be the body found in the woods, and there wasn't another child of the right age and date missing from anywhere within a couple of states, and since this was before the highway system, it was unlikely it would be a child from California, or something, although as far as I know, that possibility was checked as well. The Lindbergh's house was on a large area of land, and the site where the body was left was really out-of-the-way for someone not coming from the house. It's possible someone drove along the road looking for a desolate place, but you'd think if there were any planning, the body would buried.

If the baby were younger, just a few months old, I'd believe the "home birth, no record" theories, but this baby was more than a year and a half. It's also possible it was a child who just wasn't reported, and children did just die then, but since it was a lot easier to cover up child abuse with "the baby just died," the need to dump bodies wasn't so great. It's just very unlikely this child could have been anyone else, because there weren't any other candidates.

[sdreid]

People also claimed they were Princess Anastasia, her brother Prince Michael, Amelia Erhart, Billy the Kid, and so on. People will do anything if there's money or fame involved...

In addition, those claiming to be "Little" Charley Ross who was the first kidnap victim in the modern sense.

[Ginger]

I too found Lindbergh's mention of hearing a cracking noise and assuming it to be a wooden slat falling off an orange in the kitchen very odd.

Did slats used to spontaneously pop off wooden orange crates? I've never heard of such a phenomena. Even if they did, wouldn't a security-conscious celebrity who was also a parent take a second to investigate?

Where was the kitchen located in relation to the baby's upstairs bedroom and the sitting room (I believe that's correct) where Lindbergh was located when he heard the noise?

Are the bedroom and kitchen even on the same side of the house? One would expect him to at least get the general direction right.

Best regards,
Archaic

When he said 'the slats of an orange crate falling off a chair', I took it as meaning loose slats from an orange crate stacked on a chair, awaiting some use, having fallen to the floor. He had at least one dog, plus his wife and several servants in the house, so you probably heard noises like that in other parts of the house from time to time.

There's a map of the house at http://www.house-crazy.com/the-charl...ll-new-jersey/ , plus some photos of the nursery, then and now. I don't see how he could have confused a noise from the nursery directly overhead, with a noise from the kitchen at the far end of the house. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the orange slats had fallen before, or were precariously stacked, and hearing a wooden sound, it had to be that. I wonder too how good his hearing was, having been an open-cockpit airplane pilot.

[RivkahChaya]

If anyone is interested, a detective actually tracked Anna Anderson's real family pretty much as soon as she popped up. She had so much staying power, because there were people in France at the time actively looking for a survivor, or if there were none, then a pretender, to foment a counter-revolution in Russia, and overthrow the communist government in favor of a monarchical restoration. Also, because the play based on her life, which was immensely popular, assumed that she was actually Anastasia, and that was the only story a lot of people heard for many decades.

When DNA finally disproved Anderson's claim by matching (or, more to the point, not matching) her with Prince Philip's mitochondrial DNA, further DNA testing was done, and she in fact, did match with the people in Poland (current borders-- she was born in West Prussia in 1896) whom the detective in the 1920s had thought were her family. Her name at birth was Franziska Schanzkowska.

In 2007, the last two bodies of the royal family were finally found (Alexei, and one of the sisters), and while forensic anthropologists are not entirely sure which skeleton is which sister, they have accounted for every family member. Five young women, one teenaged boy, two related adults, and an unrelated woman, each with its own DNA profile, correctly established as two parents, six children, and the personal maid who was known to be with them.

[Errata]

The reason that the Lindbergh kids aren't having DNA tests is that people like this don't accept defeat; they do what's called "moving the goalposts." If the DNA tests didn't match, he'd claim something was wrong with then-- the samples were switched, or that Anne Morrow was unfaithful, and Lindbergh wasn't the father of her other children, or something. He'd start demanding something like the exhumation of Lindbergh's body for an attempt at tissue recovery, or a DNA test with a paternal cousin.

I would think that if his intentions were sincere he would have approached the family privately and explained to them why he thought he might be their brother. Since he would not have been given any provision in his father's will, any claim he might have on that money would have to be sued out of every living descendant. And no judge is going to order that, even if he was their brother. He would only get anything through his sibling's good will, and you don't get that by announcing your birthright to a reporter.